Headlines: League City’s Red-Light Cameras Go Dark; ‘Guerrilla Gardeners’ Bombard Midtown with Wildflowers

Photo of construction on the MetroRail north line at Fulton St: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool

19 Comment

  • Afton Oaks might have taken the title of most annoying NIMBY neighborhood in Houston away from the Heights.

    Stop complaining, you chose to live 1/2 a mile from the Galleria.

  • Astrodome proposals must include funding source or won’t be considered…. Well, that eliminates 99% of the crazy ideas floating around. I will personally fund the fuel for the bulldozer.

  • The solution is simple for Afton Oaks, just have all your streets that touch Westheimer blocked.

    oh wait, you shop at those places too?

    Afton Oaks needs
    understand that they can’t keep the suburban benefits of low traffic on side streets and a quiet neighborhood in their location.

  • The “seed bombers” spray “wildflower” seeds on “nasty, overgrown” lots that they don’t own in Midtown but the nasty overgrowth is composed of wildflowers (weeds). Sort of like saying we want Midtown walkable and full of pedestrians, as long as those pedestrians aren’t homeless people (human weeds).

  • Mark this date in history.
    I want to officially launch the candidacy of those Culberson crusaders in Afton Oaks for a Swamplot Lifetime Acheivement Award for ‘Most annoyingly NIMBY neighborhood in Houston’.

  • Drexel already made that zig-zag portion behind smith and wollensky to make it harder for the old drunken oil barons to drive home.

  • Is ‘you pay for it’ a funding source?
    I’m pretty sure that’s what the Rodeo and McNair proposed.
    Where’s their funding source?
    I love Houston, but this whole saga w/ the Astrodome is making me lose any hope that we can be a world-class city. I think the Astrodome will be to Houston as Penn Station is to New York (ironic that Penn station was replaced w/ a stadium and I’m arguing that the Astrodome should be saved).
    Maybe it’s fitting that what once was our city’s symbol to the world, will be replaced with what is Houston’s most ubiquitous feature / our truest civic symbol: a parking lot.

  • I’d be really surprised if Astrodome Tomorrow has funding. Their proposal is one of the biggest pie in the sky ideas I’ve seen yet for the dome. I’ve reviewed their Facebook and website and still cannot figure out exactly what Astrodome Tomorrow is or how it will generate enough revenue to justify the 300 to 500 million dollars it would cost to renovate the dome into any type of configuration other than its current arena style.

  • Further proof that the Astrodome commission is bought and paid for by the HLSR and Texans. Good luck finding anyone who can meet this outrageous time constraint and, oh yeah, you must have hundreds of millions backing you or else. This city needs ONE good journalist to uncover the shady insides of the good old boy’s club.

  • Yep, the only way to stop through traffic from Westheimer going through the neighborhood is to close access to Westheimer.

  • The only thing more startling than watching a bunch of rednecks try to destroy the Astrodome is the fact that a bunch of rednecks came up with the idea for it in the first place.

    http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/DOMES/HOUSTON/h-art-2.jpg

    It’s ironic – we are trying to save the greatest accidental creation of southeast Texas rednecks from the general tendency of said rednecks, which is to tear everything down and build a parking lot.

  • @doofus, I believe, per the HLSR and Texans’ lease at Reliant park, that they have exclusive rights to have an interest and approval of what will be done with the Astrodome.

  • They’re just putting the writing on the wall for everyone to see. Ed Emmett is going to sign his name on a massive wasted opportunity and turn the Dome into parking lots because no one can think past MORE MONEY RIGHT NOW in this town. What a stunning failure and disappointment for Houston this will be.

  • weren’t the Afton Oaks folks having a fit over the rail on Richmond proposal that would be designed to alleviate traffic problems as well….and now they’re complaining about traffic?

  • and i just can’t agree with why we’re concerned about having to tear down the astrodome. if this city would wake up and bulldoze every dumb stadium touched by public money tomorrow morning you could paint a permanent grin on my face from ear to ear.

    perhaps being a millenial provides me a lesser perspective on it, but the astrodome will never be anything more than an outright travesty to me. both for the leagues it represented and all the taxpayer money wasted on it.

  • So, a private group (Astros) comes to the County and gets tons of public funding to build the Astrodome. But, now, if a private group has a great idea to repurpose the Astrodome, they cannot suggest that it be paid for with any public funds or let the tax payers consider their ideas for use with public funds. Only the great wise elders of the County Commissioners who have sat on their hands for over a decade on this issue can propose a solution for the Astrodome that involves the use of public funds. The ballot measure had better have a “none of the above” option.

  • DNAguy, I second your motion to nominate Afton Oaks as “most annoying NIMBY neighborhood,” along with a special award for John Culberson. They had a chance to decrease vehicular traffic with light rail, but NO, they didn’t want the great unwashed masses traveling through their ‘hood. Galleria traffic will continue to worsen no matter what, so they will soon reap what they have sown.

  • So, the good folks of Afton Oaks are for development, but against traffic? Do they think they can have one without the others? Perhaps the developers will just build their project but leave it vacant.

  • Re the water bill: here’s a Dallas Morning News quote from someone who will lose their land to the unneeded Ralph Hall reservoir, which water hustlers have been pushing for going on twenty years:
    “We’re still opposed to it, but we don’t have the money or resources to fight it,” said Angela Scott, whose family owns 300 acres near the site.
    “My great-grandfather came here as a runaway slave at age 13. This is our home.”
    Whether you’re an environmentalist, or lean fashionably “libertarian”: either way you have ample reason to oppose the bill, and hold your legislators accountable for its passage, which is certain.
    Ralph Hall Lake no longer has the support of Ralph Hall, by the by.
    But the Dallas Morning News has never encountered a reservoir it didn’t like.